Multi-unit carousel bagging racks are predominantly used in large grocery and retail stores as a means for more quickly bagging purchased items and facilitating the transfer of the purchased items from the bagging rack to the purchaser. In particular, for a high-quantity order, such multi-unit carousel bagging racks allow the cashier and patron to operate in coordination to move the purchased items from the cashier to the patron and minimize the pauses experienced when non-carousel racks are utilized, by comparison. These pauses increase the point-of-sale transaction and cause additional wait-times for the patrons in each queue.
There are several concerns in utilizing multi-unit carousel racks for point-of-sale bagging of purchased items. For example, a multi-unit carousel rack may be configured to have at least three units or bays and may include nine units or bays. As the size of the carousel rack increases, the ability of the cashier and/or the patron to detect which bags have been filled and which bags are not filled becomes more difficult, especially when considering the opaque composition of the plastic bags used for bagging. Moreover, during peak shopping times, the desire of both cashier and patron to quickly complete the transaction can sometimes result in inattentiveness that yields purchased items that are left behind on the carousel rack, later discovered by the cashier or store personnel. Such incomplete transactions create additional costs for both the store and the patron. For example, the store must enter such information in a store log in the event the patron returns to claim their purchased items, consuming the time and effort of store personnel to record and maintain such information. Similarly, provided the patron discovers the oversight, the patron will need to return to the point-of-sale and attempt to recover the purchased items, resulting in time and travel costs.
Orphaned purchases are a frequent problem in most grocery and retail stores. Browsing Internet message board forums dedicated to retail purchasing experiences confirms that cashiers and patrons frequently overlook the final bag(s) of a transaction, which leads to customer dissatisfaction and frustration, and threatens to erode the goodwill of the retail establishment.
A search of the prior art did not disclose any patents that read directly on the claims of the instant invention; however, the following references were considered related:
U.S. Pat. No. 6,793,043 B2, issued in the name of Nguyen;
U.S. Pat. No. 6,491,218 B2, issued in the name of Nguyen;
U.S. Pat. No. 7,967,153, issued in the name of Simhaee;
U.S. Pat. No. 7,866,546 B1, issued in the name of Vance;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,992,570, issued in the name of Walter et al.; and
U.S. Pat. No. 5,115,888, issued in the name of Schneider.
Accordingly, there is an unresolved need to provide a mechanism or system for minimizing and/or eliminating instances of orphaned grocery and/or retail purchases, and thereby reducing dead-loss operational costs to grocers and/or retailers and purchase-costs to patrons.